Farinet ou l'or dans la montagne

A Swiss movie but the two principals are French:Jean-Louis Barrault cast as a rebellious young man with an unusual country accent and Suzy Prim ,an actress who made lots of movies but is too often forgotten now,perhaps because she was not very good-looking.

The subject of "Farinet" was absorbing but the treatment was much less so.Should A counterfeiter be considered a criminal whereas everybody knows that "true" money is the root of all evil,of injustice ,of war...? The inhabitants of the village are not wrong when they consider Farinet a hero ;they take a rebel stand against capitalism without knowing it .Even the "enemy" ,the gendarmes ,ar not sure to be on the right side .

One of the rare movies to get a 10/10 rating -with a tiny numbers of votes though-,"Farinet" is not really up to scratch ,boiling what could have been a true "political" comedy down to love stories,jealousy and cops and robbers stories .It is nonetheless a curio worth looking at,particularly for Barrault's fans:he is ideally cast as the rebel with a cause,championing the cause of people who are subjected to the law of the strongest,the wealthiest and the banks.

With the backdrop of late 1930's Europe and the threat of totalitarianism this film presents a parabel about freedom, where it begins, where it ends, and where the power of the state begins. I saw this about ten years ago and am now reading the book, By C.F. Ramuz, French-Swiss author, which I believe came out in 1933 and is based on an actual set of circumstances or legend out of 19th century Switzerland.